Hamlet
William Shakespeare

THE STORY

ACT III, SCENE II

Evening has come, and Hamlet is with the players before their performance, explaining how he wants
the new speech he has written to be delivered. As always, the point he wants to make leads him to give
what is virtually a lecture, this one on the whole art of acting.

NOTE:

Hamlet's advice to the players is another section of the play that
has become familiar through frequent quotation, partly because people
assume it states Shakespeare's own views on acting and on the art of the
theater. What he says, however, is also relevant to the dramatic situation.
As a well- educated nobleman who strives for a classical balance in life,
Hamlet wants the actors to be moderate and natural in their depiction
of life, not exaggerated, yet not dull. In addition to intensifying your
suspense about the speech he has written and about how the king will react
to it, the passage reminds us that only in the fictional reality of art
can Hamlet find the ordered universe he seeks, just as he can find the
perfect image of a son's revenge or a queen's sorrow only in mythical
figures of Pyrrhus and Hecuba. He believes that the theater exists to
"hold the mirror up to nature" and hopes that Claudius will
see his evil nature reflected in that night's performance.

Notice the change in Hamlet's behavior from the last time you saw him, shouting his bitterness at
Ophelia. With the players, who are not involved in his "real" life, Hamlet can be at ease and at
his best, a prince reminding artists of the ideals their art is meant to uphold. You know he is not so calm
with his family or Ophelia.

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Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern enter with the news that the king and queen- which in effect
means the entire court- will join Hamlet in watching the play. Hamlet sends Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern off to help the players prepare and calls for Horatio. He explains his scheme, since he is the
only one Hamlet can trust and asks Horatio to join him in watching the king. Horatio promises that he
will not let the king out of his sight during the performance.

NOTE:

Hamlet's speech to Horatio shows you again that Horatio, unlike Hamlet,
is a moderate man, neither rich nor poor, neither violent nor melancholy.
Hamlet loves and envies Horatio for not being "passion's slave,"
a good description of how Hamlet must see himself in his frenzied moods.

A fanfare announces the king and queen's entrance, accompanied by courtiers and guards bearing
torches. The king immediately asks how Hamlet "fares," and Hamlet, punning on the sense in
which the word means "dines," answers that he "eats the air" (another pun, on
"heir") as chameleons were thought to do, and that this is not a good way to feed capons- a
hint that he suspects Claudius, in naming him successor, of stuffing him with promises the way a capon is
fattened before being butchered. Claudius pretends not to understand what Hamlet means.

Polonius announces that he was thought of as a good actor in college, where he played Julius Caesar:
"I was killed i' the Capitol," he says. "Brutus killed me." Hamlet's reply, making
puns on "Brutus" and "Capitol," unwittingly prefigures the "brute
part" he will play later that night, when Polonius will be killed in earnest.

Told that the players are ready, Hamlet looks for a place to sit. Gertrude asks him to sit with her, but
he declines, probably because he would then be unable to watch Claudius. Instead he turns to Ophelia and
engages her in a bantering conversation full of sexual double-entendres. Her reactions, cautious and
deferential, suggest that his changed attitude has her completely dumbfounded. when she remarks that
he is "merry," however, he seems to become mad again, and says:

What should a man do but be merry? For look
you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my
father died within 's two hours [not two
hours ago].

(lines 124-26)

"Nay," Ophelia replies, "'tis twice two months," provoking Hamlet to a cynical
speech on how long a man can hope his reputation will last after he dies.